


our story's all wrong

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Road Trips, s7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 18:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14338101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: “I read your book,” Roni says. “Started it, anyway. I was going to read through the whole thing, but we got a little sidetracked.” She takes out the copy that she knows Henry keeps in the glove compartment and finds her place. “I was offended at first that I’m supposed to be the Evil Queen, but she’s…I don’t know. She might be your most compelling character.”“That’s what they said in the reviews. Great characters, but lacks authenticity.” Henry quotes from memory. “It was about fairytales. What kind of authenticity did they expect?”He’s silent for a moment, and then he sighs. “But maybe they’re right. The story’s wrong. Sometimes I think there is something in the book that doesn’t quite work, and I don’t understand it. I wrote straight from my gut, and yet…”Roni and Henry take a road trip to Storybrooke, Maine, to find Regina Mills.





	our story's all wrong

**Author's Note:**

> ANYWAY i started s7 and it's hella enjoyable but something was missing, you know? It seemed time to find it.
> 
> This goes AU from 706, and doesn't require more than general knowledge of S7!
> 
> Oh! and it was prompted by this anon tumblr prompt, "Just hold on, we're going home + swan queen"

Ivy is waiting at the door, and Roni snaps, “Now isn’t the time, Ivy.” She can’t stop staring– at the adoption papers in front of her, at the signature at the bottom, at the way she’d just signed _Regina Mills_ in an identical signature.

 

“I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say,” Ivy says smoothly, and Roni _can’t_ , not now, not with her life unraveling in front of. She stands and stalks past Ivy, out the door, the folder of information on Regina Mills in her hand.

 

Once she’s outside, she calls a Swyft.

 

* * *

 

A specific Swyft, actually, and Henry stares at the folder in disbelief, sorts through it, his face darkening as he stares at the information. _Regina Mills. Henry Mills. Storybrooke, Maine._ It’s impossible, some twisted joke of Weaver’s, except that somehow it isn’t. Except that there’s a picture of them– of _Regina and Henry Mills_ – that she’d found in Victoria’s offices and they have Roni and Henry’s faces. “It’s impossible,” Henry says, but he stares at the matching signatures and the boy in the picture. “Maybe I have a twin brother who was adopted.”

 

A twin brother, and for Roni a twin sister to adopt him. The odds are… _well_. Roni doesn’t quite believe in nonsense like destiny and inevitable meetings, which means that something is _wrong_ here. Jagged pieces of a puzzle meet, and join in all the wrong places, and this is a chance to turn them around until they fit just right.

 

They’re driving again, and neither of them speaks aloud where they’re going.

 

 _Storybrooke, Maine_ , it says on the adoption papers, and Roni stares at them again and again and again.

 

* * *

 

“I didn’t have a foster mom like that,” Henry says abruptly, hours into their drive. “I would have remembered. The clothes the kid is wearing…they’re expensive. The lunch box looks new. I didn’t get stuff like that.”

 

“Never?”

 

Henry shakes his head. “The fantasy of…of being a rich kid with two moms fighting over him and being a secret prince? That was indulgent garbage from my book. I wrote what I wanted, but I never thought it could be _real_. Someone’s playing with us.”

 

“There’s only one way to find out,” Roni says, glancing down at Henry’s phone. Waze said that they have another 45 hours until they reach their destination, which is listed as _Bangor, Maine_. Henry hadn’t been able to find Storybrooke on the map. Roni googles it absently and finds a dozen references to Henry’s book. It’s impossible to tell what’s genuine and what isn’t.

 

She googles _Regina Mills_ and sees dozen of pictures of blonde, white teenagers, of elderly women, of strangers who look nothing like her– and a single photograph of a woman with her face and an old-fashioned haircut. She clicks through to the page: [ http://storybrooke.gov](http://storybrooke.gov) and finds a brief blurb about Regina Mills, _mayor of Storybrooke_.

 

There is nothing on the page but empty words for a politician, and Roni shuts the web page and watches the road again.

 

* * *

 

“I read your book,” Roni says. “Started it, anyway. I was going to read through the whole thing, but we got a little sidetracked.” She takes out the copy that she knows Henry keeps in the glove compartment and finds her place. “I was offended at first that I’m supposed to be the Evil Queen, but she’s…I don’t know. She might be your most compelling character.”

 

“That’s what they said in the reviews. _Great characters, but lacks authenticity_.” Henry quotes from memory. “It was about _fairytales_. What kind of authenticity did they expect?”

 

He’s silent for a moment, and then he sighs. “But maybe they’re right. The story’s _wrong_. Sometimes I think there is something in the book that doesn’t quite work, and I don’t understand it. I wrote straight from my gut, and yet…”

 

“Emma Swan’s kind of a tough cookie,” Roni says absently. Emma scoops the raging Mayor Mills out of a fire, heroic to the last. There’s something very attractive about that image, and Roni squints at the terrible illustration beside it and tries to see her face in Regina’s. “You don’t think she really has a claim to Henry, though, does she?” She’s protective of a boy who doesn’t exist, of a mother who can’t exist. It’s too easy to project onto them and _pretend_ that she could be a mother, that Emma Swan could be carrying _her_ out of the–

 

 _Why_ is that where she’s projecting.

 

Henry– the actual Henry, not the narrator of his book– shrugs. “I like to let my characters have flaws and make mistakes,” he says, pulling into a gas station on the I-90. They’re somewhere in Montana, closer to North Dakota than to Washington, and there’s no turning back.

 

Roni throws his book at him. “That’s the most white boy author pretentious thing I’ve ever heard you say,” she says, and she ducks when he throws it back at her.

 

* * *

 

“What I don’t get,” Roni says, stretching as she steps out of the car, “Is why Emma is constantly surrounded by men who want to date her. Graham, August, now Neal and Hook…does she ever get a break?”

 

They’re in a parking lot at a motel in the middle of Montana, and it’s nearly 2am when they check in. They share a room, thankfully one with separate beds, and Roni pulls out the book again as Henry slides into his bed. “What’s the problem with Emma’s love interests?” he says curiously, and Roni shrugs, unable to vocalize it.

 

Something about them doesn’t fit, doesn’t feel right, and she reads about Neverland until her eyes are drifting closed and the book has introduced a series of flashbacks about Regina adopting Henry. They hurt, hurt in a way that no book should, and she can feel bitter tears of _what could have been_ lingering in the back of her throat as she falls asleep.

 

Henry pries the book out of her hands while she’s drifting off, smiling at what she’s up to. “Maybe the file was, like…elaborate fanfiction,” he suggests. “I always wanted people to write fanfiction about my book.”

 

 _What is that_ , Roni thinks, but she’s too tired to speak.

 

“I used to write X-Files fic when I was younger,” Henry says thoughtfully. “Mulder and Scully have that same energy as Emma and Regina, don’t they?”

 

 _Emma and Regina_. It sounds right when he says it like that, and Roni has tortured dreams when she sleeps, dreams of fire and magic and a woman standing beside her as she faces it. She reaches for the woman but her hands slip through her instead as though she’s a phantom.

 

* * *

 

North Dakota is uneventful, and Roni devours the rest of Part Three of the book in a few hours while Henry steers them into Minnesota. “The reviews were wrong,” Roni says, because there’s something more authentic about this book than any book she’s ever read. “You created something magical here. Although…”

 

“Although there’s something about my story that feels wrong,” Henry finishes glumly. “If I knew what it _was_ , maybe I could do something about it. But it’s like…I built something up here so carefully and then it never turned out right. And I don’t even know what it is.”

 

“I know what you mean,” Roni says, staring down at the book. She can feel it, too, the loss that seems to permeate the book, even as she falls deeper and deeper into it. Regina kisses Henry’s forehead and his memories return. She wonders if it would be so easy for her and Henry– _No_. This is a _fantasy_ , except for a photograph and some papers signed by someone with her handwriting.

 

Regina is dating a man named Robin Hood, and every scene between them gives Roni a headache, and she looks outside for a moment and sees– an image silhouetted against the trees, a woman glowing white with a heart glowing red in her hands. Another woman beside her, accepting the heart and cradling it. The book writes about Emma as though she’s a daring action hero, and Roni traces the face in one illustration, the knit brow and set jaw and smirk that doesn’t quite match the blonde’s eyes.

 

A truck speeds by, blocking her view of the trees, and they’re only dark and impenetrable when it’s gone.

 

Emma kisses Captain Hook, and Roni mutters, “ _Bullshit_ ,” under her breath and slams the book shut, opening a window to stave off the carsickness.

 

* * *

 

They drive through the day until it’s nearly midnight, and they stop in Minneapolis for the night. Tonight, Henry is the first to drift off with a sleepy, “I’m gonna make so much money from this Swyft, aren’t I?”

 

“I’ll pay for gas,” Roni says dryly. “Let me get back to Regina.” The current story’s flashbacks take place in Minnesota, of all places, where a young Emma meets a girl named Lily. Roni closes her eyes for a moment, drowsy, and she sees a dragon seared across the inside of her eyelids for just a moment.

 

She blinks. The dragon is gone.

 

Emma and Regina reconcile after a bad fight, and Roni is curled around the book in the morning like she’d been a child hugging a stuffed animal. _Unique, maybe even special_ , Emma had called them, and there’s a sense of wrongness to how it’s written, to how Emma returns to the station with Hook after she works things through with Regina. Roni googles when they’re back in the car– _Emma Swan Regina Mills_ – in a futile attempt to figure out where Henry had erred in writing this story, and finds a link to a website called [_http://archiveofourown.org_](http://archiveofourown.org). She scans the first link, flushes hard, and clicks away before Henry can see it.

 

So that’s fanfiction, she supposes. Her cheeks are hot and her heart is pounding, andHenry steers the car through Minnesota and into Wisconsin.

 

* * *

 

They stop at a dairy restaurant in Wisconsin because you _have_ to do that, Roni supposes. The waitress has a streak of red in her dark hair, and Roni can’t look away for a moment. “Do you think we’re making a mistake?” Henry wonders. “Do you think that– what if we get to Maine and there’s nothing there?”

 

“What if we get there and there _is_?” Roni counters, and they stare at each other for a moment, gripped with the uncertainty of the road ahead of them and sixteen hundred miles to go before any answers.

 

They make an odd duo, the boy who’d never had a mother and the woman who’d lost her single chance to be one. Somewhere deep within her, Roni burns with possibility, yearns for those adoption papers to be real for Henry to be _hers_. Somewhere deep within her, she wants to believe just as much as Lucy does.

 

She’s read about Emma during the trip through Wisconsin, about her struggling with her magic and her saviorhood and her descent into what might have been darkness. _Emma, put down the gun_ , she thinks, _You’re better than this_ , and Regina says the same words, so innate to both of them that Roni can mouth along with the book.

 

“A real Storybrooke,” Henry says musingly. “With…do you think they’re there? Snow White and Prince Charming? Do you think Emma Swan is there, waiting for us?”

 

Roni can feel a frisson of anticipation, of _maybe_ s and fairytales in a world where she’s never once taken them seriously. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe there’s really a Regina and Henry Mills there already. Maybe we’re just…magical figments of their imaginations.”

 

She digs her nails into her arm. She _feels_ real. “Maybe they’re magical figments of ours,” she says defiantly, and Henry grins broadly and orders the caramel cheesecake.

 

* * *

 

Emma sacrifices herself for Regina as they drive through Chicago, and Roni cries silently and doesn’t know why it aches so much. Roni isn’t a _crier_ , isn’t someone who can be brought to tears easily, but this book seems to prod at all the parts of her that are raw and delicate, getting a reaction every time. Emma Swan seems to most of all, gets under her skin and stays there, and Roni can’t _lose_ her, she can’t–

 

Henry watches her for a moment and then says, “The sacrifice, huh? I cried when I wrote it.” He laughs, uncertain in his vulnerability. “I thought…I always thought I was just kind of full of myself when I would get so emotional about my characters. But maybe…”

 

 _Maybe_. Maybe gets them through the next day, as the story feels more and more wrong and Roni can’t focus on it. She doesn’t want to critique it to Henry, not when he might take it to heart, so she struggles through the story as they drive onward, through Indiana and Ohio until they’re in rural New York on their final night in a motel.

 

She skims through the Dark Swan era, and it feels– twisted, like someone had taken Henry’s story and turned it inside out. Robin Hood dies and Roni exhales in relief, absorbing herself in a journey that Regina and Emma take to New York. Emma says _I believe in you_ and Roni’s heart twists, aches for something she’d never known. There are stories that are compelling still, buried deep within the others, and there are too many that just don’t ring true.

 

“Are we sure,” she says when they’re back in the car. “Are we sure that these are the people we’re going to find in Storybrooke?”

 

Lucy had thought so, but Lucy is a child, and Roni reads the same stories and feels them hurt her because of things that Lucy can’t possibly understand. “Did you ever consider,” she begins as they drive into Massachusetts and Part Six is just about done. “Emma and Regina might be…”

 

Henry looks at her, brow crinkling, and Roni loses her courage. “Never mind,” she says, and she stares out into the stone and trees that tower on either side of the highway.

 

* * *

 

Their route takes them to Bangor, and after that, they’re lost. “Have you ever heard of Storybrooke?” Roni tries at a gas station, and the attendant laughs gruffly.

 

“I get that one every few months. Think I liked it better when the big Maine books were Stephen King’s,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “At least then idiot teenagers can find their way themselves.”

 

“Let’s just go,” Henry says, tugging her arm, and they get back into the car and drive aimlessly, both of them disappointed and neither one refusing to express why.

 

Roni had believed a little too much, despite her better instincts, and now she remembers why she stays down to earth, where nothing can disappoint her. Roni had wanted Regina Mills’s life, dark past and all, because there’d be a _son_ and a _family_ and an _Emma Swan_ at the end of the tunnel, and all of those things had seemed worth the pain that had preceded them. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I shouldn’t have dragged you on this wild goose chase.”

 

“Are you kidding?” Henry says, grinning at her. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” And maybe she’s lost things she can never articulate, but she has this man who might not be her son but is her…is someone with whom she has a connection. She has Henry, and this trip is worth it for him. “Hey, I was thinking. We could get that address in Boston and try going there– oh, damn,” Henry says, fiddling with his phone. “There’s no service out here. We’ll have to keep going until we get some.”

 

He drives straight ahead, through a winding road that doesn’t lead to civilization, past a diner in the middle of nowhere, and down another road that takes them right back to the diner. Henry makes a left instead of a right, and they drive for ten minutes before they’re back in front of the diner.

 

“What’s going on?” Roni wonders, and an impossible thought strikes her. “Are we– how can this be happening without–“

 

* * *

 

When they drive down the road from the diner, there’s a spot where they turn around, sometimes without even noticing. Now that Roni’s looking out for it, she can see it in front of them, an ordinary that should carry them forward, but Henry is turning without a second thought, back to the diner. “Henry,” she says, her voice steady. “Turn back. Drive forward.”

 

He blinks dumbly, drives a few feet and then stops. “Again,” Roni urges him. “Again.” She can see– a car careening toward the town line, two women standing together with one’s hand on the other’s shoulder. She blinks and _no_ , they’re standing opposite each other now, eyes filled with tears and hands together. _No_ , it is only one woman alone, yellow hair and red jacket and a palm extended as she looks out into the distance with her eyes lost.

 

Bit by bit, they inch forward, until suddenly the woman isn’t there anymore and the compulsion to turn around is gone and they’re cruising down an empty road, right up until the _Welcome to Storybrooke_ sign.

 

Henry reaches for Roni’s hand and Roni squeezes it, blinking away tears. She hasn’t finished the book yet but she’s suddenly certain that it won’t end right, that this is where it should have ended. “Did you figure it out?” Henry says, suddenly breathless. “Why our story’s all wrong?”

 

“I think I might have,” Roni says as they pull into the town, coming to a stop at the spot where the photograph had been taken. There are townspeople outside, pausing to stare at the car with curiosity, and Henry steps out of the car first.

 

The people squint at him, and one man– redheaded with a Dalmatian sitting beside him– says in a disbelieving voice, “Henry, is that you?”

 

“Archie?” Henry guesses, and Roni– _it can’t be, they can’t be real_ – steps gingerly from the car.

 

There is a collective intake of breath when Roni emerges, a whisper of _Regina_ that suffuses the town. And a car comes speeding down the opposite street, bright yellow and so recognizable that Roni knows its driver at once, has seen it beside them on the road for forty-nine hours and known it had never been real until now. The car screeches to a halt and Emma Swan bursts from it, her eyes blazing as vividly as Roni had dreamed them, and she lands in Henry’s arms, holding him tightly, her face buried in his shoulder as he looks helplessly up at Roni in bewilderment. “You’re home,” Emma gasps, and she’s…

 

 _Beautiful_. Exactly as beautiful as Roni had imagined her to be from indistinct illustrations in a book that had gotten it all wrong. “Emma,” she says, her voice choked, and Emma pulls away from Henry abruptly, twisting around to stare at her.

 

“Emma Swan,” she says, her voice strengthening.

 

Emma says, looking from Henry to Roni, “You don’t remember me, do you?” she sounds suddenly small, distraught, and Roni wants to reassure her that she _does_ , that they’ve both known somehow and come here for her, that this has always been about Emma–

 

She says, the suspicion of _authenticity_ in her heart and throat, “Where is he?”

 

“He?” Emma repeats, confused.

 

“Captain Hook. And Robin Hood. The men we were meant to be in love with. Are they here?” Roni asks, and Henry looks just as baffled as Emma now, just as lost at what Roni’s asking. _Authenticity,_ and _our story’s all wrong_.

 

“Men,” Emma repeats, and she wrinkles her nose. “Are you telling me that Captain Hook is real and we never even met him in Neverland?” she says, shaking her head. “Which realm were you _in_ , Regina?” and Roni flies forward, the relief enough that she feels as though she’s floating on air, because _our story’s all wrong. Our story’s all wrong._

 

Emma catches her in her arms, laughing with relief, and Roni kisses her desperately, tastes familiar lips and moves in a motion that she’s done a thousand times over years and years of being in love with Emma Swan. There is light in the darkness at once, decades returned to her with a kiss, and a curse breaks so swiftly that the rush leaves her in ecstasy.

 

* * *

 

Henry’s heart is intact, the greatest surprise of breaking the curse. Drizella’s plan had failed, and her curse hadn’t been foolproof, after all. There are phone calls to make– “ _Henry Daniel Mills, where the hell are you?_ ” Ella demands, and there’s an exasperated “ _dios mío_ ” when he says sheepishly, “ _Storybrooke, Maine?_ ”– and there are enemies to fight in Hyperion Heights, in a land without magic.

 

Regina has never needed magic to get her way in Storybrooke. She makes well-placed phone calls and dismantles Belfrey Developments, makes a few more to settle the people of Hyperion Heights more comfortably in their enclave. She does all of this from bed, Emma wrapped around her, kissing her neck as she finally saves the people she’d been determined to long ago.

 

“I can’t believe Henry wrote this hetero fairytale,” Emma says, scowling at the book. “Captain Hook?” She’s been particularly offended by that twist. “As if I’d have _gone to the Underworld_ for some man. You _died_ saving me from the Dark One.”

 

“I remember,” Regina says patiently.

 

“And Robin Hood? What’s so great about Robin Hood?” Emma demands. “Why would your other half decide to run off with him instead of merging back with you? This soulmate bullshit is as bad as my supposed _marriage_.”

 

“Supposed marriage?” Regina says, raising her eyebrows.

 

“Not with _you_ ,” Emma says, smiling in the reverent way she always does when she remembers the two of them in white dresses, escaping from the too-elaborate ceremony to get quietly married in Town Hall instead. “That was what it should have been. No…murdered grandfathers except the one I knew about–“

 

“He had it coming!”

 

“I know, I know,” Emma says, biting her shoulder lightly. “At least Henry seems embarrassed about all of it.”

 

“It was the curse,” Regina says thoughtfully. “It did everything in its power to stop us from learning who we were to each other. If we never found each other, then we couldn’t break the curse.”

 

“That’s a hell of a curse,” Emma says, leaning back against the headboard as she contemplates it. “Living without each other– without even knowing we could _have_ each other–“ She exhales in a whoosh, and Regina pulls her down to her again, kisses her soundly and slips her arms around Emma to hold her tightly. “Even our fairytale taken from us.” She sounds somber, and she plays with Regina’s hair, presses her lips to Regina’s forehead.

 

“We took it back,” Regina murmurs, and she remembers hours in a car, Emma Swan a mystery she couldn’t shake. She remembers falling in love with a character, a woman in a book with stubborn eyes she’d known from only words, a woman who’d been hers despite every word to the contrary. “It’s ours again.”

 

“It’s ours,” Emma says fiercely. “It’s _right_.”


End file.
